NFIB’s Research Center released its August jobs report, which indicates that 21% of small businesses plan to create new jobs in the next three months. Bloomberg (9/3, Golle) highlights the report, writing, “The National Federation of Independent Business said Thursday that a net 21% of small firms in August were planning to create new jobs, up 3 percentage points from the prior month and the fourth straight increase. Some 33%, the most since March, said they had open positions they were unable to immediately fill.” NFIB’s Chief Economist Bill Dunkelberg was quoted saying, “The small business labor market is recovering and moving in the right direction. ... However, there is still uncertainty and many small businesses are counting on additional financial assistance.” This story also appeared in The Washington Post (9/3, Golle).

The AP (8/29, Gordon) reported, “With the economy still in the pandemic’s grip, the Federal Reserve is facing a decision on whether to stretch an emergency lending program in a way that could bring more risk for the government and taxpayers,” and “lawmakers are pressing the central bank to deliver more aid to struggling small and mid-sized businesses.” The Treasury Department “is guaranteeing the Fed’s lending programs – hundreds of billions each – to corporations, smaller businesses and state and local governments.” A “bipartisan group of over 100 U.S. House members pushing the changes, led by Reps. Taylor and Al Lawson, D-Fla., have asked Mnuchin and Powell to set up a Treasury-backed lending program for struggling companies that issue debt tied to their commercial mortgages, which is bought by investors.”

Forbes (8/14, Frankel) reported, “Since the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) stopped taking applications on Aug. 8, small businesses struggling in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic are left with few options for additional financial assistance.” However, “Nearly half of PPP loan borrowers anticipate requiring additional financial support over the next year, according to a National Federation of Independent Business (NFIB) Research Center survey.”

The NFIB Small Business Optimism Index (8/10) fell 1.8 points to 98.8 in July, a level near the historical average for the survey. Owners are tempering their expectations for economic conditions in the future, as the COVID-19 pandemic is expected to continue. NFIB Chief Economist Bill Dunkelberg is quoted saying, “This summer has been challenging for many small business owners who are working hard to keep their doors open and remain in business. ... There is still plenty of work to be done to get businesses back to pre-crisis numbers.”

Bloomberg (8/5, Dmitrieva, Kharif) reported a new survey by the National Federation of Independent Business found 20% of small businesses plan to lay off workers if they have not already done so once their federal funding from the Paycheck Protection Program runs out. Additionally, close to 50% of small businesses said they will need more PPP funds to survive over the coming 12 months. The survey appeared to confirm earlier findings by Cornell University that about 25% of workers hired back by their employers with PPP funds have been informed they will likely be laid off again.

Reuters (9/2, Marte, Saphir) reported, “US business activity and employment ticked up through late August, the Federal Reserve said on Wednesday, but economic growth was generally sluggish as COVID-19 hotspots hampered reopening efforts that fueled an early-summer rebound.” The Fed’s “Beige Book” report “highlighted the uneven rebound underway in the US economy, with some areas such as residential real estate surging with the help of low interest rates, but other sectors, such as commercial construction and agriculture, struggling to rebound.”

The Washington Examiner (9/3, Bedard) reported that, “in a much-needed first, Transportation Secretary Elaine L. Chao today unveiled a national strategic plan to smooth the $52 billion-a-day freight delivery system and eliminate bottlenecks that can slow the shipments of energy, food, and even packages from Amazon, Walmart, and Target.” She said, “The department is unveiling the first-ever National Freight Strategic Plan so that the U.S. can maintain our competitive edge across major industries like agriculture, manufacturing, energy production, and e-commerce.” The plan “is a broad blueprint to coordinate infrastructure improvement plans and freight shipping strategies with the federal government, states, and towns.”

The New York Times (9/3, Cohen, Friedman) highlighted the NFIB’s latest COVID-19 loan program survey, which “found that one out of five small business owners said they would have to shut down if economic conditions did not improve in the next six months.” Reuters (9/4, Bernstein) reported, “Nationwide, half of small businesses said sales were down by 25% or more in August from pre-pandemic levels.” According to NFIB director of research Holly Wade, the retail, travel, hospitality, and business and personal service sectors were hardest hit. NBC News (9/3) reported NFIB’s survey also “found that 84% of PPP recipients said they have none of that money left, an increase of 13 percentage points in a single month.” Also providing coverage were Politico (9/7, Cassella) and the Business Journals (9/4).

USA Today (9/2, Groppe) reported, “The federal debt will grow to approximately the size of the entire economy this year, the Congressional Budget Office announced Wednesday in its first analysis to fully take into account the economic and fiscal effects of the coronavirus pandemic.” The debt “is projected to be larger than the gross domestic product by next year, according to the report.” USA Today added that “since the pandemic, Congress has spent trillions of dollars on coronavirus-related spending, including direct payments to individuals, payroll assistance for businesses and expanded unemployment benefits.”

Bloomberg (9/2, Litvan) reported that on Wednesday, Senate Majority Leader McConnell “expressed doubts about whether Congress can get a deal on another pandemic relief package after lawmakers return to Washington after a month-long recess, despite the Trump administration push for a quick, targeted stimulus.” McConnell said, “I don’t know if there will be another package in the next few weeks or not.” McConnell “said that talks between top administration officials and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi haven’t been fruitful, and that any embrace of bipartisanship in the Capitol has ‘descended’ as the fall elections near.”

Bloomberg (9/1, Surane) reported American Express is letting small businesses have more time to pay off certain purchases. Amex Vice President of Global Commercial Card Lending Brett Sussman said, “We’ve long heard from our card members who are small-business owners that increased payment flexibility is important to them.” This followed other bets by the card issuer that small businesses’ recovery will help drive profit, including its acquisition of digital SMB lender Kabbage in August.

The Lahaina (HI) News (8/27) reported the SBA Veterans Small Business Advisory Committee is holding “virtual public meetings next week via Microsoft Teams. The U.S. Small Business Administration’s Interagency Task Force on Veterans Small Business Development (IATF) will meet on Sept. 2, and the Advisory Committee on Veterans Business Affairs (ACVBA) will hold its virtual public meeting on Sept. 3.” SBA Office of Veterans Business Development Associate Administrator Larry Stubblefield said, “Now more than ever, it is critical for our veteran small business advisory committees to discuss challenges faced by the veteran small business community and how we can expand the resources available to them..”

In a piece for Arkansas Business (8/31), Gwen Moritz wrote that support for small businesses “is nothing new,” citing “Small Business Saturday” as an example of promoting small business consumership. Moritz adds, “But this year, the importance of focusing on minority-owned – especially Black-owned – business has been driven home by the unforeseeable combination of Black Lives Matter protests and COVID-19. In June, an analysis of government data by researcher Robert Fairlie of the University of California, Santa Cruz, found that the pandemic had left 40% of Black business owners out of work, compared with 17% of white small-business owners.”

Inside Defense (8/26, Tressel) reported that the US Army has launched a small business innovation research pilot program called the Special Program Awards for Required Technology Needs (SPARTN). In a press release issued last week, the service said that the new program will help address the “three long-standing barriers small businesses have faced in working with the Army: transparency, access, and capital.” Inside Defense reports that the “first initiative, called ‘Fire Faster,’ seeks to create systems or subsystems that increase the rate of fire.”

PYMNTS (8/16) reported intelligent payments software firm Plastiq is “now included in the U.S. Visa Small Business Hub, which will allow it to join other firms in offering new, safe, digital tools to small- to medium-sized businesses (SMBs), according to a press release.” Plastiq “will let SMBs use a Visa card to pay for almost any business expense, including when a supplier doesn’t accept credit card payments, the release stated.”

The AP (9/4, Rugaber) reported the Labor Department announced on Friday that “unemployment dropped sharply in August from 10.2% to a still-high 8.4%, with about half the 22 million jobs lost to the coronavirus outbreak recovered so far.” According to the AP, “Employers added 1.4 million jobs last month, down from 1.7 million in July and the fewest since hiring resumed in May. And an increasingly large share of Americans reported that their jobs are gone for good, according to the Labor Department report.”

Reuters (8/27, Mutikani) reported on Thursday the Labor Department reported that “initial claims for state unemployment benefits fell 98,000 to a seasonally adjusted 1.006 million for the week ended Aug. 22.” That was in line with economists polled by Reuters who estimated 1.0 million claims.

The Washington Post (8/27, A1, Rosenberg, Long) reported that Congress “split town in August after letting the $600-a-week unemployment bonus that millions of people...have been relying on expire,” and “millions of desperate Americans, many of whom have never relied on emergency government assistance before, are flabbergasted and furious, believing they have been cut loose by a Washington political structure that doesn’t care about their predicament during the pandemic.” The Post “spoke to 20 people who have lost their livelihoods in recent months, and all said they felt immense pressure to stay afloat without the extra $600.” In addition, “every person interviewed said they were furious at Washington policymakers for letting such a critical benefit lapse amid the nation’s worst economic crisis in a century.”

The AP (8/13, Rugaber) reported that “the number of Americans applying for unemployment dropped below 1 million last week for the first time since the coronavirus outbreak took hold in the US five months ago, but layoffs are still running extraordinarily high” and “applications for jobless benefits declined to 963,000, the second straight drop, from 1.2 million the previous week.” The AP added, “the figures show that the crisis continues to throw people out of work just as the expiration of an extra $600 a week in federal jobless benefits has deepened the hardship for many – and posed another threat to the US economy.” Likewise, the Washington Post (8/13, Rosenberg) said that “all told, more than 28 million people are currently receiving some form of unemployment benefits as of the week of July 25, down more than 3 million from the previous week.”

The AP (8/6, Wiseman) reported on Thursday the Labor Department reported that “nearly 1.2 million laid-off Americans applied for state unemployment benefits last week, evidence that the coronavirus keeps forcing companies to slash jobs just as a critical $600 weekly federal jobless payment has expired.” The AP added the number was “down by 249,000 from the previous week after rising for two straight weeks,” and Reuters (8/6, Mutikani) said the number of new claims “was the lowest since mid-March” and lower than the Reuters poll of economists estimate of 1.415 million.